7th Grade Hilarity
I’ve transcribed this here before, but now that I’ve got the wonderful and incredibly high-tech method of taping my TV with my camera and uploading said recording to Compy and then onto YouTube, I can show you the actual video. Not that you care (and not that I expect you to), but I’m posting it anyway. Mostly so that I’ve put it somewhere.
Here is our 7th grade advanced reading group performing our interpretation of the fight between Paul and Jamis in Frank Herbert’s Dune. Brendan’s the tall blonde guy playing Paul, Kyle’s the guy playing Jamis, Mitchell’s the guy who jumps off the tower in the beginning, Kristen’s Jessica, and I’m the camera guy.
And here are the “bloopers,” which is basically us performing Brendan’s scripted interpretation of pretty much everything relating to Duncan Idaho. Brendan’s twisted, twisted script.
I miss that freaking sweater so much.
Old Vaio is Old
My stuff came this morning, yay!
First thing I did involved digging out the monitor to Big Compy and hooking it to Old Vaio (the one with the busted screen). Laughed at all the old crap from high school senior year and all my undergraduate silliness.
Examples!
Haha, I’d totally forgotten about the time I recreated Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” using flour, water, and food coloring.
Spinning pineapple drawn and animated in Flash! I had this titled thereisaseasonturnturnturn.gif. (EDIT: apparently you have to click on stationary pineapple to get it its own page. It’ll spin there.) (EDIT 2: apparently it depends on your browser)
A bunch of my silly high school friends and me at a bowling party. Poor Aneel.
An experiment with eyeliner and some eyeshadow back when I actually had eyeliner. I might still have some, but who knows where it is.
Also, of the 50 songs I currently have rated 5 stars, 22 of them were rated 5 stars back in the era of Old Vaio.
That is all.
10 Years
It happened before Facebook. It happened before YouTube. It happened before the iPhone. It happened before Wi-Fi became widespread.
But the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center spread across the country probably faster than any of us could have imagined.
I remember waking up that morning to go to school. My mom already had the news on. It was shortly after the first tower had been hit, and as such there was still a great amount of confusion amongst the news reporters about what exactly had happened. Yes, the tower had been hit by a plane, but there was still speculation regarding whether it was an accident.
I personally remember thinking that’s all it was as I packed up my stuff to walk to school (8th grade). I think my most distinct memory of the day was when I first got on campus a little bit later. Students were rushing into the building, parents exiting the parking lot quickly. I saw my friend Amy, also in a hurry, pass me on her bike.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The second tower just got hit,” she said. “Big news. Everyone’s talking about it.”
I really don’t remember much else from that day. School didn’t happen, that’s for sure; every TV in every classroom was on, every pair of eyes in every grade watching silently as the events unfolded.
School didn’t happen for the rest of the week, either.
I think if I had been a few years older I would have remembered more. I actually remember September 11, 2002 more vividly because of how afraid everyone was about a similar even occurring on the one-year anniversary.
I guess there’s really not much I can say that hasn’t been said by anyone else today. I hope all those killed (yes, ALL those killed), both on that day and from events resulting from that day, rest in peace.
That is all.
I miss my artsy-fartsy childhood sometimes
When I was a kid in elementary school, I remember my mom always getting a little catalog full of “summer enrichment courses” offered by the city of Moscow. The catalog contained info for both adult and child classes. Being an only child with two working parents, it afforded my family to find me something to do over the summer, something which I readily looked forward to and, because of this, always loved to look through it to find the most interesting summer distractions.
Once, when I was about 6, we found a two-week-long program (that, now that I think about it, ran during the school year and not the summer) that was basically a clay camp—it was for younger kids like myself and it entailed making things out of clay and, after they were fired, glazing them and taking them home.
This was perhaps the greatest activity ever for me.
I remember being totally enthralled by it. This wasn’t the rubbery, neon-colored, oven-bake Sculpey clay I was used to. This was actual moist clay that had to be fired in a kiln before you could do anything else with it. And the glazing? HOLY FREAKING CRAP. I loved how glazes that looked brown or black initially “magically” turned out red or green or baby blue after the clay pieces were fired a second time.
The instructor of this clay class was (and, for all I know, still is) Linda Canary. I really liked her and she really liked me and I really liked clay, so after I had taken clay class several times, she suggested to my mom that I should try out Art Camp, a summer camp she run in which kids not only got to play with clay but also got to use charcoal, oil pastels, acrylic paint, plaster, sculpt soapstone, make books, and (perhaps most importantly) play on Linda’s property, which included a huge field, access to Paradise Creek, like fifteen semi-domesticated cats, a huge dress-up bin, and two treehouses. Not only that, but this camp ran for FIVE HOURS every weekday for TWO WEEKS.
Needless to say, I was thrilled.
I went to this camp until I was older than the upper age limit Linda had written on the flyers. So did I stop going? NEVER! Linda and I had gotten to know each other very well, and she actually suggested once I reached the age of 13 that I should act as her apprentice. What that meant: I would be able to attend the camp without paying the fee, but my job would basically be to assist the younger kids, organize the supplies, set up stuff between activities, and clean brushes/pottery wheels/charcoal-covered tables/charcoal-covered kids. But I could also do as much art as I wanted.
AWESOME.
I think I apprenticed until I was 16 or 17, before I had to go and get a “real” job. Would I go back and do it again if Linda were to ever ask me? Hell yes. Art Camp was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.
Anyway.
I don’t know what made me think so much about Art Camp this afternoon, but when I got back from walking around London I screwed around on the internet to see if I could find the kiln brands that Linda used, ‘cause if I ever get rich I’m SO building myself a pottery studio. I came across Dogwood Ceramic Supply, which is where I think Linda got EVERYTHING, including glaze.
So hey, if this kind of stuff interests you at all, click on the link and browse around. If I make my own studio, I’m holding adult Art Camps. Because we all need some unabashed creativity in our lives.
The end.
More Pictures
I found some more pics while I was packing this afternoon. Therefore I shall share them.
This is me with my cat Wooder.
This is an older me with an older Wooder. Note the drawing on the wall. My mom let me draw and write all over the walls in my room when we lived in Troy. How awesome is that?
This is my dad with Wooder. I don’t know if I was alive yet.
Me with Brutus (the black one) and Lena, siblings from a litter from my mom’s older cat, Gracie. Haha, I have so much paint on my pants. And the cats are like let me go, weirdo.
I was a cat lady from birth.
I was a weird child.
Proof:
Parking lot attack by mullet girl! Be afraid.
Here’s another picture of me apparently being a raptor. My grandma’s got that “what is wrong with this child?” look on her face.
And here’s a picture of me on a rock on Kamiak Butte, just being silly. I loved that shirt more than life itself.
Haha, sorry, I just randomly found these pics this afternoon.
Exactly how does one go about kissing the rain?
So as probably none of you know, I recently came into contact with an old friend from 7th grade. It was weird—early last week he randomly popped into my head and I thought, “I wonder what ever happened to Ross?” and then last Thursday I get a call from my dad—Ross had called him (sometimes it’s a good thing when at least someone in my family is able to keep the same phone number for more than 5 years) and dad gave me all his contact info.
Now we’re friends on Facebook and we talk on Messenger on occasion. He’s pretty much exactly the same, which is good to know ‘cause he was blind and insane and really awesome to hang with in 7th grade and is apparently still blind and insane and really awesome to IM.
Apparently I’m still the same, too. We spent the other night talking about the old Knowledge Bowl competitions we “participated in” solely because it meant we got to go to McDonald’s and then goof around on the bus to the competition/at the competition/on the bus back from the competition.
A few more memories passed between us, and then he said this: “You never seemed very happy, still breaks my heart to think about.”
This kinda surprised me. Really? I didn’t ever seem very happy? Back in junior high, when all I had to worry about was stalking Patrick learning how to type and not getting my thumb sawed off in shop class?
I find that very…disconcerting.
Do those of you who know me now find me unhappy? Am I like this harbinger of depression or something? ‘Cause I certainly don’t remember being Emo Central in 7th grade (that was 8th grade, but I was on meds and they killed my soul, among other things) but apparently that’s how I came across. There’s a lot more shit going down in my life right now than there was back then, but aside from the occasional “I HATE MY LIFE” blog—and let’s be honest, who doesn’t have those every once and awhile?—I don’t think I’m all that unhappy-sounding.
Meh. Probably overanalyzing it. I’M GONNA GO WRITE DEPRESSING POETRY NOW WOO!
Today’s song: Vancouver City (featuring Linda Ganzini) by Innerlife Project
Waiter! There’s a dead and alive cat in my box!
HOLY CRAP, so I was screwing around on StumbleUpon this afternoon and I came across some random page of NASA’s. Multiple clicks later and I came to this.
I had totally forgotten that we’d attempted to do this in fifth grade. I say “attempted” because at 4 days prior to the competition we realized that we were short a motor (we foolish children and our lack of inventory-taking skills!) and thus were forced to withdraw. No, I don’t know how exactly we had the majority of our rover finished before we realized “hey, we kinda need a third motor,” but we did. Probably because one of our members had to quit because he failed like 5 reading quizzes in a row and he was the one in charge of our Lego kit. We would have won, too, ‘cause my transmission was killer and Daniel built an exceptionally awesome rock scooper (that’s a highly technical NASA term).
So yeah. Nostalgia.
I also found a random flash drive this afternoon that had this previously un-blogged-about album cover contained on it:
Also, I need to get super hyper again in time for my calc final. I don’t remember a single damn thing I wrote on my test on Monday, but I did pretty well.
So there.
Today’s song: Hemvägen (Live Nyhetsmorgon 2007) by Detektivbyrån
My mother had infinite patience with me when I was a kid
I swear to god, I don’t know how she put up with me. From the time I was a very small kid (Kindergarten) I was absolutely fascinated by this camcorder she had, and I always had her tape me doing the most mundane things. Examples:
- I had a row of about 40 small rocks and made her tape me reading off their names, then giving them prizes for being rocks.
- Me reading out of the Troy phonebook.
- Me using a stencil to draw circles (FOR LIKE AN HOUR).
- Me writing in my journal.
- Me naming every freaking item in the house.
- Me counting to 100. Twice. I’m not kidding.
- And then she made the biggest mistake of her life and decided to let me have a shot at using the camera. I claimed it as mine and proceeded to make tons of ridiculous movies, including quite a long series involving a pair of gay grandpa sock puppets (no joke). I thought I was Steven Spielberg or something, I don’t know.
- Also, 24 + 7 = 20, apparently. I’ve obviously stayed at this math level my whole life.
Hooray for growing up in hick town Troy. I really don’t know why I didn’t go into directing or something after seeing all this.
Any of you high school friends remember this?
So I’ve been cleaning out all my crap since I’m moving away on…um…Sunday…
Any of you guys remember that time I took the deck of cards at lunch and started making a whole bunch of crazy stories about each of the cards? I found the paper on which I wrote the flowchart of the whole story. There were like four cards named Dick, and there was Octoball, Alan, Jacob, Spermius, Aneel, myself, a bunch of midgets, Thousand Pound Theo, Dr. Semen…
Is this ringing a bell for anyone? I was laughing for like three hours reading this. I have Istanbul drawn on the left side of the paper, Fort Cocks is on the opposite corner, like every card got an STD, the Dickless Support Group’s in the middle of the page…
This was freaking epic. Almost as good as the pornographic reading of To Kill A Mockingbird.
Hey dorkatrons
So I’ve been thinking about typing class recently, for some unknown reason.
2001: a frightened number of 7th graders enter the classroom of Mrs. Walker, a creepy old lady who sounds bitter about the fact that typing classes are now taught on “computational machines” rather than typewriters.
Little did we know, this class would be our introduction to the internet.
This kid named Lucas showed us, one day after we’d finished our typing exercises for the period, this site called freearcade.com. It became the reward for finishing our typing crap and our incentive for typing as fast as we could every single damn day. Javanoid, Wiz 3, Fillit…oh, pre-adolescence grew so much more interesting with the internet.
Before this, believe it or not, I had barely been exposed to the wonderful series of tubes that Al Gore invented. We’d used Google (back when it was Google!) in 6th grade once, and I think the thing I was researching was slugs.
So all this got me thinking more…do you think people born around our years of birth (1986 – 1989, say) had the “optimal” exposure to the internet? Rationale: people born earlier than us had to either be exposed to it enough to start to understsand it, or they decided not to be exposed to it and therefore are kinda clueless about it (example: my mother and my father, respectively). People born later than us may have had too early and too prolonged exposure to it, and therefore may have a greater risk of having or gaining an addiction to it (example: one of my younger cousins).
Think about. I obviously have no authority on anything.
Short and random
I miss Art Camp. Aneel (if you still read these/if I ever bother to check if I can post), do you miss Art Camp?
I also miss Ross.
I also think Lady GaGa is snazzy.
Ah, Childhood.
Random thoughts lead to this: Things I remember from childhood.
- Tinker Toys
- Legos
- Bob Ross
- Reading Rainbow
- Lite-Brite
- Easy Bake Oven
- Sesame Street
- Lisa Frank
- Those Barbie car things that you could drive (I ALWAYS wanted one!)
- Oregon Trail
- Geo Safari
- Spirograph
- Creepy Crawlers
- Tamagotchi
- The Neverending Story
- Baywatch
- Pete’s Dragon
- Early Edition
- Walker: Texas Ranger
- Bill Nye the Science Guy
- Goosebumps
- Ring Pops
- Yo-Yos
- The Magic Schoolbus
- Motherfucking TALESPIN
- Those pill capsules with the foam animals in them
Anyone else remember any of these? Childhood was freaking great.
Seventh
You know what I miss? 7th grade. It was a fun time. I know none of you know (except for Aneel), but it rocked.
Haha, I remember messing around with Ross after school, and Jimmy, his son (who was a coat, I think) and Nell, Aneel’s puffy marshmallow coat. And then that whole thing with Ross throwing the snowballs at the white trash truck with the gun rack in the back. Man, that was hilarious.
Knowledge Bowl. Now THAT was fun. Me + Aneel + Ross = fail at every competition (mostly because we messed around and were always one person short of a full team) but hey—it was fun.
I miss it. It was not high school, and it was not catholic school.
Put on your happy pants!
So the year is coming to a close, and I feel the best way to end it (on my blog, at least) is to make a list of my most-remembered memories from our little lunch group.
So without further ado, I present to you:
~* The Most-Remembered Memories List! *~
~ The “family tree” I made out of my deck of cards
~ That creepy bearded guy cornering me while I had a pad in my pants and asking whether or not my parents would approve of me being “inappropriate”
~ Crab humping! (and “over capacity” Jacob!)
~ Sticking my clarinet case down my pants
~ Taking off my bra and throwing it on Aneel (multiple occurrences)
~ The whole “that’s not Gangrene!” situation
~ Tampy!
~ The tampon machine
~ “Boxing” with Hunter
~ Pissing off Alan (multiple occurrences)
~ Throwing M&Ms up into the ceiling with Candida
~ Those cardboard stilts in the bathroom
~ Harassing Ballerina Boy (multiple occurrences)
~ Taking butt and crotch pictures with my camera phone
~ Those Easter eggs–whacking them with my head
~ My reading of To Kill A Mockingbird
~ Crab-walking down the hall
~ Writing the Valentine’s Day poem to Aneel’s brother
~ Taking off my panties while wearing a skirt and then doing a cartwheel (thanks, E’raina!)
There are probably dozens more. Do you guys remember something that I don’t? If you do, tell me and I’ll stick it on here!
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